Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits

by Dave Barry

  I also don’t want to know how much we spend each year for the upkeep on Richard M. Nixon.

  The $8.95 Tax Plan

  I’d like to take just a moment here to discuss my tax plan, which I call the You Pay Only $8.95 Tax Plan, because the way this particular plan works, you would pay only $8.95 in taxes. There would be no deductions, but you would still be permitted to cheat.

  I imagine many of you have questions about the details of this plan, so I’ll try to answer them here in the informative question-and-answer format:

  Q. How much money will your tax plan raise?

  A. To answer your question, I punched some figures into my personal home computer, using the following “Basic” computer language program:

  ME: HOW MUCH WOULD WE RAISE IF EVERYBODY PAID $8.95 IN TAXES? ROUGHLY. COMPUTER: SYNTAX ERROR. ME: NO, A SYNTAX ERROR WOULD BE “ME HIT COMPUTER IN SCREEN WITH BIG ROCK.” COMPUTER: ROUGHLY $2 BILLION. ME: THANK YOU.

  Q. But the federal government wishes to spend $830 billion this year. Where will the other $828 billion come from?

  A. It would come from people who elect to purchase the new American Express Platinum Card, which costs $250, making it even more prestigious than the Gold Card, which is of course much more prestigious than the Green Card, which is advertised to lowlife scum like yourself on television. According to the American Express brochure, the new Platinum Card is

  “beyond the aspirations and reach of all but a few of our Cardmembers,” and “sets its possessor on a new plateau of recognition.” Under my plan, people who buy the Platinum Card would be taxed $500 million each, and if they complained the slightest little bit they would be thrown into federal prisons so lonely that inmates pay spiders for sex.

  Q. What about nuns?

  A. Nuns would be taxed at a reduced rate of $5.95, because they do so little damage to our nation’s crumbling infrastructure. For example, you have probably noticed that they drive really slow. This makes quite a difference, as the following statistical analysis shows:

  ME: WHAT PERCENTAGE OF THE DAMAGE TO THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM IS CAUSED

  BY NUNS? COMPUTER: WHAT? ME: PERHAPS THIS HOT SOLDERING IRON WILL REFRESH YOUR MEMORY. COMPUTER: A VERY SMALL PERCENTAGE.

  Q. What about Mark Goodson and Bill Todman?

  A. Who?

  Q. The highly successful game-show producers. How would they be affected by your new tax plan?

  A. They would have their bowels ripped out by wolves. q. Good. In the cartoon series “Tom and Jerry,” which one is Tom?

  A. Well, I say it’s the cat. My four-year-old son says it’s the mouse, but he also says dinosaurs could talk.

  COMPUTER: IT’S DEFINITELY THE CAT, AS N “TOM CAT.”

  A. Yes, that’s what I say, but my son claims he knows of mice named Tom.

  COMPUTER: HA HA! WHAT A CRETIN.

  Q. What are the steps involved in getting this tax plan passed by Congress?

  A. Well, first it has to be formally introduced as a bill on “Meet the Press”; then various congressional committees and subcommittees have to go to Aruba with their spouses for several weeks to see if there are any similar tax plans operating in the Caribbean; then interested groups such as the American Eggplant Council have to modify it so that members of the eggplant industry are exempt from paying any taxes ever and get flown free wherever they want on Air Force jets; then Senator Jesse Helms has to attach an amendment making it legal, during the months of May and June, to shoot homosexuals for sport, except of course for homosexual tobacco farmers; then the bill has to be signed by President Reagan; then the Supreme Court has to check it to make sure he didn’t forget and sign

  “Best Wishes, Ron” again.

  Q. Dave, the You Pay Only $8.95 Tax Plan makes a lot of sense to me. How can

  I let my Congressperson know how I feel on this issue?

  A. The easiest way is to simply steal into his bedroom in the dead of night and stand over his sleeping form until he senses your presence and wakes up, then express your views clearly.

  Q. Fine.

  A. Be sure to use sweeping arm gestures.

  Mutant Fleas Terrorize Midwest

  I was going to write about how the president’s revolutionary new tax plan will affect you, but it occurred to me that I really don’t care how the president’s revolutionary new tax plan will affect you. So instead I’m going to write about the giant vampire fleas that are on this pet-killing rampage in the Midwest.

  You probably read about these fleas recently in the Sun, a weekly supermarket newspaper with a circulation of 18 trillion. According to the Sun article, what happened was that the American farmer, all the while we were feeling sorry for him, was deluging the soil with herbicides, despite the known scientific fact that chemicals cause insects to mutate and become enormous, as has been documented in countless Japanese movies. So the result is that the Midwest is now infested with giant mutant fleas that, according to the Sun, “are themselves as large as the small dogs they kill, draining them dry of life fluids in as little as two minutes.” The Sun even printed an actual artist’s depiction of a dog being attacked by a flea the size of Sylvester Stallone.

  Of course you don’t believe a word of it. You think publications like the Sun make everything up. I used to think that, too, before I checked into a story the Sun published a few months ago headlined “GIANT FLYING CAT TERRIFIES STATES.” Remember? The article that featured the actual artist’s depiction of an enormous cat? Flying? With wings? Well, I did some checking, and you will be interested to learn that every single word in the headline is true except for “GIANT,” “FLYING,” “TERRIFIES,” AND “STATES.” It turns out that some people in Harrington, Delaware, have indeed seen a largish cat. The local editor says he thinks it’s an escaped exotic pet, because it has a collar and has been declawed. He said it does not have any actual wings per se, but it jumps pretty well, especially considering that, to judge from its tracks, it has only three legs. They think it eats birds.

  But the point is that the central thrust of the Sun headline (“CAT”) was right on target, which gives us every reason to accept the giant-mutant-flea article at face value. Nevertheless, I thought I should check it out, so I called the Midwest, which is in Iowa, and talked with Donald Lewis, extension entomologist for Iowa State University. He said: “I haven’t heard anything even remotely similar to that. We do have periodic flea outbreaks, but each flea is still small.” Naturally, this made me suspicious, so I called Lysie Waters of the University of Iowa, who said: “I haven’t heard anything about that. And I definitely would have heard about giant fleas.”

  And that was all the proof I needed. Because when two men from separate universities that are miles apart and have completely different nicknames (“Cyclones” vs. “Hawkeyes”) used almost exactly the same words—”I haven’t heard anything”—to deny having heard anything, then you don’t have to be a seasoned journalist such as myself to know they are covering up a giant mutant flea rampage. My guess is they don’t want to scare off the seven or eight tourists who flock to the Midwest each summer looking for directions.

  How serious is this problem? To help answer that question, the Sun has published a direct quotation from a “Cornbelt sheriff” who, as you can well imagine, asked not to be identified. He states that these giant fleas “are almost impossible to catch” because “they can jump 50 times their own height without warning.”

  The Cornbelt sheriff does not specify why he would wish to catch the giant mutant flea or what kind of warning he feels the flea should give. (“Stand back! I am about to jump 50 times my own height!”) But he does point out that once the fleas have eaten all the smaller animals in the Midwest, they “will have to go somewhere else to eat the larger livestock, chicken ranches, city streets, and homes.”

  “Little children will be completely at their mercy,” he notes.

  I have mixed feelings about all this. On the one hand, I have never liked small dogs. There are these two in par
ticular that live near me, both about the size of the wads of cotton they put in aspirin bottles to keep you from getting at the aspirin. They’re always yapping at me when I go by, and quite frankly the only thing I would enjoy more than watching them have all their life fluids sucked out by a giant mutant flea would be watching this happen in slow motion. But I draw the line at larger livestock, chicken ranches, and most little children.

  Step One, of course, is to send Vice President Bush out there to the Midwest to frown at the affected area from a federal helicopter. Step Two is to develop a plan. I think we should try an approach that has been used on other insect pests in the past, namely: You get a hold of a whole bunch of the males, sterilize them, and drop them from airplanes onto the affected area, where they mate with the females, who don’t get pregnant, and there you are.

  Of course, we have to solve some technical problems first. We need to figure out a way to sterilize giant mutant fleas. My guess is this job will call for highly paid personnel with soothing voices and tremendous manual dexterity. Also, we will need some kind of special parachute system, because otherwise we’re going to have giant, federally neutered fleas crashing through the roofs of cornbelt dwellings, thus further depressing the American farmer. Of course, all of this will cost money, which fortunately is the very thing the government will continue to relieve you of in large amounts under the president’s revolutionary new tax plan.

  Booked To Death

  I’m on a book tour. I’m going on radio and TV shows, being a Guest, selling a book. I’ve been on this tour two, maybe three weeks now. Maybe 10

  weeks. Hard to tell. Been in a lot of time zones. Been on a lot of planes. Had a lot of complimentary honey-roasted peanuts whapped onto my tray table by hostile flight attendants. “Would you care for some peanuts, sir?” WHAP. Like that. The flight attendants hate us passengers, because we’re surly to them because our flight is delayed. Our flight is always delayed. The Russians will never be able to get their missiles through the dense protective layer of delayed flights circling over the United States in complex, puke-inducing holding patterns.

  Our flight is also always very crowded. This is because air fares are now assigned by a machine called the Random Air Fare Generator, which is programmed to ensure that on any given flight (1) no two people will pay the same fare, and (2) everybody else will pay less than you. People are flying across the country for less than you paid for your six-week-old corn muffin at the airport snack bar. Anybody can afford to fly these days. You see Frequent Flyers with bare feet and live carry-on chickens.

  And so the planes are crowded and noisy and late, and everybody hates everybody. If armed terrorists had tried to hijack any of the flights I’ve been on lately, we passengers would have swiftly beaten them to death with those hard rolls you get with your in-flight meal. Funny, isn’t it? The airlines go to all that trouble to keep you from taking a gun on board, then they just hand you a dinner roll you could kill a musk ox with.

  Me, I eat the roll. Got to eat. Got to keep my strength up, on the book tour, so I can be perky when I get interviewed by the cheerful talk-show host. You want to sound as perky and enthusiastic as possible, on a book tour, so your listening audience won’t suspect that you really, deep down inside, don’t want to talk about your book ever ever ever again. You have come to hate your book. Back at the beginning, you kind of liked it, but now you think of it as a large repulsive insect that cheerful hosts keep hauling out and sticking in your face and asking you to pet.

  But you do it, because the alternative is gainful employment. You put on your perky face, and you chat with the host about why you wrote the book. Why you wrote it, of course, is money. I’m very up front about this. “Buy my book,” I always advise the listening audience. “Or just send me some money in a box.”

  I’ve had some fun times, on my various book tours. The most fun was when I was promoting a book about do-it-yourself home repair. This book was, of course, totally worthless, not a single fact in it, but I ended up on a whole bunch Of radio shows where the hosts, who had not had time to look at the book personally, thought I had written a real book about home repair. So the interviews went like this:

  HOST: Dave, what’s the best place to add insulation?

  ME: Bob, I recommend the driveway.

  HOST: Ha ha! Seriously, Dave.

  ME: I am serious, Bob.

  HOST: My guest has been Dave Barry.

  I have also been on some very interesting TV shows. I was on a show in Cleveland where the other guests were a sex therapist and a Swedish gynecologist, who were supposed to have a sensitive discussion about the Male Perspective on sexuality with an all-male audience that had been bused in especially for the show. it turned out, however, that there was also beer on the bus, so the Male Perspective on sexuality consisted almost entirely of hooting and snickering. Somebody would ask the sex-therapist where the “G-spot” was, and she’d start to answer, and somebody in the back would yell: “It’s in Germany!” Then there would be a violent eruption of hoots and snickers and we’d break for a commercial.

  Recently, in Boston, I was on a show where the other two guests were—this is true—a police officer who explained how to avoid getting your purse snatched, and a woman named “Chesty Morgan” who once served in the Israeli army and currently dances topless and has the largest natural bosom in the world. She said she wears a size double-P bra. She has it made specially in Waco, Texas. She has a very interesting and tragic life story, and I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the near future, she comes out with a book.

  Hot Books And Hot Coals

  Time now for the annual literary survey and firewalking report:

  First, I am pleased to report that millions of units of new literature will soon be arriving at bookstores near you. I know this because I recently went to San Francisco to attend the American Booksellers Association’s annual convention, at which all the big publishing companies reveal their fall literary lines. And on hand were a number of top authors such as Mister T, who was there to stress to the young people of America that they should read a lot of books or he will break all the bones in their faces; and Mary Lou Retton, who discussed a new book she has written about (get ready!) physical fitness. This is certainly a topic we need a lot more books on, because at present we have only enough fitness books to cover the Midwest to a depth of 60,000 feet.

  Some other exciting book concepts you can look forward to seeing this fall include:

  –A great many books telling you how to become so extremely successful in business, so totally excellent, that one day, during a budget meeting, you just vanish in a blinding flash of total managerial perfection, and the next thing you know you are on a distant misty mountain top wearing a white robe and talking about motivation with Lee Iacocca; —Biographies of two of the three Stooges; —A book called How to Find a Husband in 30 Days (Get Ready ... Get Set ... Get Married!), which is a terrific literary concept, the only problem being that it is written by the same person who wrote the best-selling Thin Thighs in 30 Days, which also seemed like a terrific concept except that it did not work, in the sense that if you glance around with your eyes angled slightly downward you will note that the general population continues to have thighs the size of re search submarines.

  And here is a major piece of literary excitement for you; Parker Brothers has unveiled a new group of cute licensed characters for children. This is the one thing we need even more than we need another fitness book. These licensed characters are called “The Hugga Bunch,” and I am pleased to report that they are just about the most lovable little wads of cuteness to mince down the pike since Rainbow Brite. You parents of preschool children are definitely going to hear a lot of high-pitched whining about these exciting characters.

  Which brings us to the firewalking portion of our report. One of the authors at the convention was a person named Tolly Burkan, who is one of the top, if not the top firewalker in the United States. For the benefit of those of you who do no
t watch “Donahue,” I should explain that firewalking is a very important new emerging growth trend where people walk on hot coals in bare feet. You will never in a million jillion years guess what state this concept has gained great popularity in: California(!). Out in California, you can pay people money, and they let you walk on their hot coals.

  Besides doing firewalking seminars, Tolly Burkan has produced various cassette tapes and books, including his hardcover book Dying to Live, in which he explains how he used to be really messed up and try to kill himself all the time, but now he is all straightened out and goes around encouraging people to walk barefoot on hot coals. Also he supervises fasting. According to a brochure I got at his firewalking demonstration, you pay him $35 a day, in return for which you get not to eat under his personal supervision. Also for $500 he will whack you in both kneecaps with a ball-peen hammer.

  Ha ha! just kidding! I think!

  The firewalking demonstration took place at a parking lot near the convention hall, and there were maybe a hundred of us on hand to watch. Tolly, who had a wireless microphone and who has that extremely mellow California-spiritual-leader style of speech similar to what You would get if you gave Mister Rogers a horse tranquilizer, explained the basic theory of firewalking, which as I understand it is that if you really believe you can do something, then by golly you can just do it, even if it seems impossible. I happen to agree with this theory. I think it explains, for example, how large heavy commercial airplanes get off the ground despite the fact that they are clearly too heavy to fly, especially when their beverage carts are fully loaded.